M HKA Ensembles

Installation, 00:08:00, 300 x 300 x 300 cm.

Collection: Courtesy Galleria Continua.

In Speaking Wall, an installation from 2010, the visitor dons a headset, stepping up onto a row of bricks that dead-end into the wall. Then something unexpected takes place: a voice in the headset tells the visitor where and when to move along the bricks; the audience member’s identity is arbitrarily shifted to performer. He or she is brought forward (‘Step a bit closer, closer ... ,’ says the wall) and then backed away. To make this all work, Gupta has embedded a sensor in the wall so that it knows where the ‘performer’ is when issuing its commands. This becomes a poignant performance as the voice begins speaking about shifting borders that render the identities of both human and object ambiguous. The voice of the wall tells a story about a border that was drawn in the dirt and exposed to the wind, thereby shifting a few centimetres. Such arbitrary borders are meaningless, of course, which makes the performer’s identity meaningless, too. ‘So its fine,’ the wall says, ‘so I no longer need your ID, no longer need to know your name, your religion, your sex and the place you came from.’ There is no need to know your identity when borders across landscapes are constantly being re-drawn by nature or, more likely, by humankind. Gupta asks once again: how much has really changed?

^{Jones (R.)., Shilpa Gupta, In: Frieze, 2012}

With the kind support of:
Technicians: Daan Brinkmann and Thomas Eichhorn
Assistance: Czetan Patil and Jacqueline Fernandes